\ Ty-v-vs  \ Lk>u>0  • 


cyj.i  ^ 


Why  Foreign  Missions  Cannot 
Retrench  on  Account  of  the  War 

By  Arthur  Judson  Brown 


1.  Because  the  work  has  been  built  up 
through  a long  series  of  years  and  cannot 
be  hurriedly  adjusted  to  temporary  condi- 
tions in  America.  A mill  can  be  shut  down 
for  a while  or  run  at  half  capacity  and  re- 
turn at  any  time  to  full  operation ; but  not 
a long  and  laboriously  developed  mission 
work  in  non-Christian  lands.  The  Board’s 
business  has  not  fallen  off,  but  is  greater 
than  ever.  This  year’s  obligations  were 
fixed,  within  the  limit  authorized  by  the 
General  Assembly’s  Executive  Commission, 
months  before  the  European  War  broke  out 
and  commitments  were  made  that  could  not 
be  recalled  after  nearly  half  of  the  fiscal 
year  had  passed. 

2.  Because  missionaries  have  been  sent 
out  by  the  Church  for  life,  and  cannot  be 
discharged  as  a merchant  can  discharge  a 
clerk.  The  faith  and  honor  of  the  Church 
are  involved. 

3.  Because  it  would  be  extravagant  to 
dismiss  them.  An  employee  in  America 
can  be  easily  replaced,  but  a missionary  is 


a highly  trained  and  carefully  selected  man, 
transported  at  heavy  cost  to  the  other  side 
of  the  world,  and  maintained  for  three 
years  of  study  of  language  and  people  be- 
fore he  can  begin  his  real  work.  When  he 
has  acquired  experience,  he  represents  an 
investment  in  money  and  a developed  value 
for  work  which  it  would  be  wasteful  to 
throw  away  and  later  begin  all  over  again 
with  new  men. 

4.  Because  there  would  be  no  present 
saving,  but  on  the  contrary  additional  ex- 
penditure in  recalling  missionaries,  as  they 
and  their  families  would  have  to  be  brought 
home  at  large  expense. 

5.  Because  our  73  hospitals,  our  board- 
ing schools  for  the  blind  and  for  deaf 
mutes,  and  our  asylum  for  the  insane  are 
full  of  helpless  sick  and  afflicted  people  who 
need  our  care  and  whom  it  would  be  cruelty 
to  abandon. 

6.  Because  our  16  colleges,  87  acade- 
mies, 1,526  primary  and  intermediate 
schools,  59  kindergartens,  115  schools  of 
other  kinds,  including  normal,  medical, 
nurses’,  theological  and  Bible-training 
schools,  and  2,773  Sunday-Schools  are  full 
of  students  who  represent  a great  mission- 
ary opportunity,  and  on  which  we  are  de- 
pendent for  the  future  supply  of  native 
preachers  and  teachers.  It  would  be  an 


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enormous  loss  of  influence  and  prestige  and 
almost  a death  blow  to  the  Church  of  the 
future  to  turn  them  out  either  to  a life  of 
ignorance  or  to  go  to  anti-Christian  schools 
where  they  would  be  educated  away  from 
Christ  instead  of  towards  Him. 

7.  Because  the  work  is  now  conducted 
in  the  most  economical  way  consistent  with 
efficiency.  The  administrative  expenditures 
of  the  Board  last  year  were  3.64%,  and 
including  other  disbursements  in  America 
required  by  the  General  Assembly  and  the 
propaganda  among  the  home  churches 
2.81%  more,  a total  of  only  6.45%,  which 
is  believed  to  be  the  lowest  percentage  of 
any  large  missionary  board  in  the  world, 
and  which  experienced  business  men  have 
repeatedly  told  us  is  remarkably  low  as  com- 
pared with  business  corporations.  Indeed 
a British  missionary  director  has  criticized 
our  Board  for  being  too  economical  in  its 
administrative  expenditures.  On  the  field, 
the  general  fact  is  expressed  by  the  mis- 
sionary who  writes : “We  have  considered 
the  question  of  reducing  expenses  from  all 
sides  and  can  see  no  way  of  retrenching 
unless  we  stop  work,  for  we  have  been  car- 
rying on  this  Mission  with  the  least  possible 
expense.” 

8.  Because  as  a result  of  many  years  of 
toil,  our  mission  work  has  attained  a mo- 


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mentum  that  would  make  retrenchment,  or 
even  restriction  to  the  present  scale,  a dis- 
aster from  which  it  could  not  recover  for 
years.  The  following  table  will  show  the 
advance  during  the  last  decade : 


Per 

cent,  of 

1904 

1914 

Increase 

Foreign  Missionaries... 

837 

1,226 

46% 

Native  force 

2,160 

5,766 

160 

Organized  churches  . . . 

400 

728 

82 

Communicants  

50,172 

133,713 

160 

Schools  

823 

1,781 

116 

Pupils  

27,009 

64,687 

140 

Sundav-school  scholars. 

49,745 

154,139 

210 

Hospitals  

43 

73 

70 

Dispensaries  

59 

100 

70 

Receipts  on  field  for 

congregational,  edu- 

cational  and  med- 

ical  expenses 

$117,355 

$560,195 

377 

Per  capita  

$2.34 

$4.18 

79 

Receipts  at  home  from 

all  sources $1,068,118 

$2,171,260 

130 

Per  capita  

$.90 

$1.49 

66 

It  will  be  noted 

that  the 

income 

of  the 

Board  in  this  period  increased  100%.  This 
is  very  gratifying,  but  is  it  not  still  more 
gratifying  that  the  work  on  the  foreign 
field  increased  at  an  average  rate  of  117%? 
Our  present  problem  therefore  is  not  one  of 
failure,  but  of  splendid  success;  the  prob- 
lem of  inducing  the  home  Church  to  keep 
up  with  the  march  of  the  Kingdom  of  God 
on  the  foreign  field. 

9.  Because  the  European  War  has  in- 
volved the  Board  in  extraordinary  expendi- 
tures which  must  be  met,  increasing  the  cost 
of  hospital  supplies,  money  exchange,  tra- 
vel, prices  of  staple  commodities,  calling 
for  the  relief  of  missionaries  of  European 


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Boards  whose  supplies  have  been  cut  off  by 
the  war,  destroying  mission  property  at  some 
of  our  stations  where  the  war  has  involved 
fighting,  and  at  the  same  time  affecting 
our  income  at  home  by  leading  givers  to  be 
more  than  ordinarily  conservative  and  by 
the  absorption  of  popular  interest  in  the 
worthy  efforts  to  relieve  suffering  in  Eu- 
rope. Every  missionary  worker  is  eager 
to  have  all  possible  help  given  to  war  suf- 
ferers ; but  to  divert  missionary  contribu- 
tions is  not  to  give  honestly,  as  such  gifts 
are  really  made  at  the  expense  of  mis- 
sionaries. Manifestly,  too,  pledges  for  a 
budget  made  before  the  war  was  known 
will  not  suffice  for  the  extraordinary  condi- 
tions which  the  war  has  created. 

10.  Because  the  home  Church  is  amply 
able  to  maintain  its  foreign  missionary 
work  at  full  strength  and  to  enlarge  it  even 
at  this  time.  The  derangement  of  business 
is  bringing  temporary  loss  of  income  to 
many  persons,  but  it  is  bringing  increased 
business  to  others,  while  large  elements  of 
the  population,  especially  in  the  agricultural 
districts  and  in  the  Middle  and  Western 
States,  are  unusually  prosperous.  There  is 
no  valid  reason  for  believing  that  the  finan- 
cial ability  of  the  Church  as  a whole  has 
been  permanently  impaired  or  that  it  is 
likely  to  be. 


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11.  Because  even  if  American  Christ- 
ians were  much  poorer  than  they  are,  gifts 
to  foreign  missions  form  such  a tiny  pro- 
portion of  their  incomes  that  it  is  absurd 
to  urge  that  it  is  necessary  to  lessen  them 
on  account  of  the  war  or  of  any  financial 
disturbance.  These  gifts  to  our  Board 
from  living  sources  last  year  were  $1,694,- 
464,  an  average  of  only  $1.16  per  member. 
Will  any  one  seriously  allege  that  doubling 
this  amount  would  have  the  slightest  appre- 
ciable effect  upon  the  income  of  the  average 
Presbyterian  ? And  yet  doubling  it  would 
wipe  out  the  deficit,  pay  the  war  emer- 
gency expenditures,  and  meet  all  the  obli- 
gations of  the  year.  Some  people  are  ask- 
ing, “Why  not  use  your  legacies?”  Under 
the  rule  of  the  Assembly  and  the  Board,  we 
are  using  annually  $100,000  from  legacies 
and  the  interest  on  the  remainder  and  on 
the  permanent  funds  of  the  Board.  In  addi- 
tion, the  Board  is  applying,  as  it  applied 
last  year  with  the  approval  of  the  General 
Assembly,  as  much  of  the  Kennedy  bequest 
as  it  is  deemed  prudent  and  right  to  employ 
in  the  work  of  a given  year.  Our  annual 
budget  takes  these  resources  into  considera- 
tion and  still  leaves  $1,850,000  which 
must  be  secured  from  churches,  Sunday- 
Schools,  Women’s  Societies,  Young  Peo- 
ple’s Societies,  and  individuals,  if  we  are 
to  cancel  the  deficit  and  meet  the  obli- 


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gations  for  the  year  even  without  making 
the  necessary  enlargements  contemplated  by 
the  Board  and  approved  by  the  Executive 
Commission  at  the  beginning  of  the  year. 
It  would  be  wrong  in  itself  and  it  would 
have  a dangerous  effect  upon  living  testa- 
tors if  it  were  known  that  the  Board  used 
the  legacies  of  the  honored  and  beloved 
dead,  some  of  whom  made  them  with 
knowledge  that  the  Board’s  policy  was  that 
any  sum  beyond  the  $100,000  referred  to 
would  be  used  for  the  strengthening  of  the 
work — it  would,  we  say,  be  wrong  in  itself 
and  disastrous  in  its  influence  to  use  leg- 
acies to  make  good  the  failure  of  the  living 
Church.  The  deficit  which  the  Board  is 
now  carrying  is  primarily  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  churches  last  year  fell  short  of  the 
amount  which  the  Executive  Commission 
and  the  General  Assembly  and  the  Board 
believed  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  that  it 
was  reasonable  to  expect  them  to  give  and 
on  the  basis  of  which  the  Executive  Com- 
mission and  the  General  Assembly  author- 
ized the  Board  to  project  its  work.  The 
way  out  of  this  difficulty  is  not  to  depend 
upon  the  dead,  but  upon  the  living. 

12.  Because  the  Church  should  emulate 
the  example  of  Christians  of  former  days. 

I Several  of  the  British  missionary  societies 
were  founded  in  the  period  of  the  French 


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Revolution  and  the  Napoleonic  wars.  The 
Baptist  Missionary  Society  of  Great  Britain 
made  some  of  its  most  notable  advances 
during  the  Crimean  and  Boer  Wars.  Some 
of  the  strongest  societies  in  America  were 
formed  in  war  times.  The  foreign  mission- 
ary work  of  at  least  one  of  the  Churches 
in  our  Southern  States  was  started  in  the 
darkest  days  of  the  American  Civil  War. 
While  the  contributions  to  the  northern  mis- 
mionary  societies  fell  off  during  the  first 
years  of  the  struggle,  they  regained  their 
former  standard  before  the  war  closed,  and 
in  some  cases  exceeded  it.  Without  ques- 
tion, American  Christians  of  to-day  can 
equal  the  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  of 
Christians  of  former  days.  No  concession 
therefore  should  be  made  to  a spirit  of 
retreat,  but  the  Church  should  be  confident- 
ly expected  to  address  itself  with  new  vigor 
to  the  supreme  necessities  of  the  hour. 

13.  Because  the  Church  needs  the  stim- 
ulus of  heroic  effort  and  sacrificial  giving. 
There  are  enormous  latent  resources  in  the 
Church  which  have  hardly  been  touched  by 
the  giving  thus  far.  In  the  words  of 
Phillips  Brooks,  “It  is  not  keeping  expenses 
down,  but  keeping  faith  and  enthusiasm  up 
that  gives  a clear  balance.” 

14.  Because  the  world  conditions  precip- 
itated by  the  war  summon  the  Church  to 


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make  its  message  to  men  everywhere  more 
strong  and  compelling,  to  make  Christianity 
a more  vital  and  virile  force,  a religion 
which  will  affect  the  whole  man,  so  that 
he  will  govern  not  only  his  private  life  but 
his  business  relations  and  his  duties  of  citi- 
zenship in  accordance  with  the  principles  of 
Jesus.  This  is  not  a time  to  weaken  the 
force  of  the  Christian  message  by  failing 
to  support  the  work  of  the  Church. 

15.  Because  foreign  missions  is  the  anti- 
thesis of  war,  standing  for  everything  in  the 
relations  of  different  peoples  which  would 
make  war  between  them  impossible,  recog- 
nizing that  whatever  the  superficial  differ- 
ences, there  is  in  the  sight  of  God  only  one 
race  and  that  is  the  human  race,  and  that 
men  ought  to  love  one  another  and  help 
one  another  and  not  regard  one  another  as 
rivals  or  enemies.  The  missionary  enter- 
prise, therefore,  stands  for  world  brother- 
hood and  world  peace.  The  only  hope  of 
preventing  the  recurrence  of  this  dreadful 
war,  the  only  hope  for  the  future  is  in  the 
universal  triumph  of  this  principle. 

16.  Because  the  opportunity  in  non- 
Christian  lands  for  which  the  Church  has 
long  hoped  and  prayed  and  toiled  and  to 
which  devoted  pioneer  missionaries  conse- 
crated their  lives  and  saw  afar  by  faith  has 
now  come.  The  world  is  at  last  open  to  the 


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Gospel  and  ready  to  hear  it.  Shall  we  allow 
the  voice  of  that  Gospel  to  be  drowned  by 
the  tumult  of  warring  nations?  Shall  we 
not  rather  make  it  clearer  than  ever  before? 
The  “Continent”  has  well  said  that  “the  ter- 
rific world-crisis  now  fallen  on  the  nations 
challenges  the  universal  Church  as  no  other 
situation  in  the  history  of  the  past  400 
years.  The  conjoint  exhibit  of  moral  fail- 
ure, moral  need  and  moral  opportunity  in 
the  military  tragedy  to-day  convulsing  hu- 
manity calls  Christians  to  a supreme  test 
of  how  much  they  believe  in  Christ  and 
how  much  they  will  dare  and  do  to  make 
him  King  and  Peacemaker  over  this  dis- 
tracted earth.  If  the  Church  ever  intends 
to  vindicate  its  name  among  men  as  the 
champion  of  a pure  and  peaceable  religion 
of  heavenly  power,  now  is  the  time  when  it 
must  move  forward  with  consecration  sur- 
passing all  it  has  shown  before.  Now  is  the 
hour  for  sacrifice,  for  devotion  that  costs, 
for  fidelities  unflinching  and  unlimited.  The 
reason  why  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord 
must  cover  the  earth  as  the  waters  cover 
the  sea  is  now  evident  as  never  before. 
Nothing  less  than  literal  saturation  with 
religion  will  save  the  world  from  such  out- 
breaks as  now  bathe  it  in  blood.  Thin- 
spread,  nominal  Christianity  is  a demon- 
strated failure.  Nothing  but  the  uttermost 
insistency  and  persistency  of  Christians  for 


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the  rights  and  will  of  their  Master  can  be 
worthy  of  their  calling  and  allegiance  in 
this  critical  juncture  of  human  life.  If 
the  earth  is  to  be  covered  deep  with  the 
knowledge  of  the  Lord,  the  matter  to  care 
for  first  is  that  the  tide  shall  not  be  allowed 
to  ebb  away  from  the  fields  where  it  now 
prevails.  Recession  anywhere  now  in  any 
religious  work  would  verge  on  treason.” 

If  the  Presbyterian  Church  is  to  main- 
tain this  position,  the  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions  will  require  for  the  Deficit  carried 
over  from  last  year  the  sum  of  $292,150, 
for  the  regular  work  of  this  year,  which 
was  well  under  way  months  before  the  war 
was  known,  $1,859,321.  To  these  sums 
must  be  added  about  $100,000  for  the  War 
Emergency  Fund — a total  of  $2,251,471. 
Manifestly,  the  ordinary  scale  of  giving  will 
not  cover  this.  Will  you  not  make  yours 
an  extraordinary  one?  The  fiscal  year  is 
rapidly  passing.  Will  each  reader  of  this 
leaflet  immediately  send  some  gift  to  Mr. 
Dwight  H.  Day,  Treasurer  of  the  Board 
of  Foreign  Missions,  156  Fifth  Avenue, 
New  York  City.  Mention  your  church  or 
society,  and  credit  will  be  given  to  it. 


The  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  the  U.  S.  A. 


Form  No.  2229 


December  1 , 1°14 


